A FLORIDIAN, AN ALBANIAN, A FINN: AN
ENGAGING MIX
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By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Nov. 14-21, 2011
Vol. 14, No. 21
SANTA ROSA---For
all his abundant lyric gift, the
Californian turned Floridian David Carlson, 59, is going to a new
direction---he needs the change of pace. “Chamber music is what I will
work on
next,” the composer declared, after yet another vocal work was unveiled
with
impact at the Santa Rosa Symphony.
Carlson,
you may recall, had produced the imposing opera tragedy “Anna Karenina”
a year
ago at Opera San Jose. And his 18-minute vocal-orchestral opus in a
similar
vein, “The Promise of Time,” came here Nov. 12-14, with the composer in
attendance to take a bow. It’s part of an important “Magnum Opus”
commissioning
program shared by several Bay Area orchestras.
“The
Promise of Time” evolves as an exuberant, quasi-operatic experience
through
contrasting moods, penned by a composer with a secure command of
gestures---particularly orchestral ones. Indeed, I kept wishing he
would stuff
a few more purely orchestral interludes between the vocal lines, the
way
Richard Strauss used to love doing.
The
texts
by poet Susan Kinsolving, written in collaboration with the composer,
have an appropriately
autumnal quality, reflecting on the ephemeral nature of life,
presumably looking
back on a long existence with various regrets and omissions. This is
most
striking in “Velocity with Variations,” where the sheer velocity of
passing
time becomes a burden, echoed again in the finale’s rueful line, “My
sorrow is
an hourglass.”
In the opening
“Blossoms Abundant,” Carlson spins colorful
orchestral garlands---the prelude to passionate outbreaks having
Wagnerian
aspirations.
I
was
moved. There were a few concerns: the
high tessitura of the soprano voice made the eloquent texts
unintelligible. And
in this interpretation, the inexorable march toward the finish rarely
allowed
time to breathe deeply, ponder, and let the message sink in with the
impact
that it had buried inside. Rubato here and there would have helped a
lot.
The
soloist
was dramatic soprano Marie Plette, with considerably more force than
subtlety.
She powered the piece vigorously, with a good sense of both pitch and operatic dimension, projected throughout the
Wells Fargo Center
when heard before a packed house on Nov. 13.
The
conductor was the French music director Bruno Ferrandis, devoting most
of the
program to Nordic excursions by Sibelius, with the doleful French horns
providing a unique perspective. The Sibelius D Minor Violin Concerto
has always
struck me as haunted by unspoken tragedy. It made for a concert center
point of
considerable impact. Soloist Tedi Papavrami, an Albanian artist, was
soloist
with a singing tone as well as robust sounds penetrating to every nook
of the
1560-seat Wells
Fargo Center.
His interpretation was exemplary.
Closing
the
concert was Sibelius’ popular Fifth Symphony, where the columnar
up-and-down of
the French horn theme provides a stirring finale. Ferrandis conducted
the work
meticulously. The brass and timpani however tended to drown out the 43
string players on stage.
This,
Ferrandis’ sixth season, is the final one for the SRS in the Wells Fargo Center.
Next fall, the
orchestra pulls up stakes and moves several miles southward to the new Green Music
Center on the Sonoma
State campus in Rohnert Park.
Santa Rosa
(CA) Symphony, Bruno Ferrandis, in concert Nov. 12-14. For info: (707)
546-3600, or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2011
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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